


Forever, Oliver

by asuralucier



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Character Death, Chopin - Freeform, Classical Music, Coming of Age, Father son relationship, Friendship, Gen, Grief and Healing, History, Illness, Joie de Vivre, M/M, Nebulous Historical AU, Piano Tuning, Rainer Maria Rilke - Freeform, Science By Osmosis, Stefan Zweig - Freeform, based on a book
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-10-29 13:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20797136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: Dad was good at fresh starts. He started over when Mom died and took all of her things out of that back room, the warmest place in our house. When the accident had occurred, he insisted that we go to school a little more than a week later as if nothing had happened.Thirteen-year-old Elio Perlman is tired of death and change. Elio lives with his father Samuel, an affable history teacher, on a sheep farm that used to belong  to his mother’s family. When nuclear disaster strikes a nearby power plant, Samuel welcomes two refugees into their home, a Mrs. Miriam Trent, and her sixteen-year-old son Oliver who is sick with radiation poisoning.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I didn’t think I would ever write in this fandom again, but then this fic happened. Nearly twenty years ago, I read a book, _Phoenix Rising_, by Karen Hesse, upon which this fic is based. Recently, I ordered it on a whim and realized that the book had struck me in the way in the way _Call Me By Your Name_ had; it’s one of those books that I am so glad exists because it stays and sticks in one’s bones, even if it occasionally leaves me a sobbing mess. 
> 
> This is complete and will be posted in parts every two weeks. 
> 
> Thank you very much for reading.

Dad was good at fresh starts. He started over when Mom died and took all of her things out of the back room, the warmest place in our house. It’d taken him a while, but he’d done what I couldn’t. Later, he said to me that with every fresh start, it was a little like learning to walk again. To get up, to trust. The more you did it, the better you got. 

“No more change,” I’d said in my petulant eight-year-old way. “And don’t you dare move the piano.” 

Mom had a piano. An old upright that sat in our living room. When she first got sick and had to lie down all the time, she’d always leave the door open so she could still hear me play. 

Dad looked across the table at me. He looked amused, but mostly sad. “The piano is not going anywhere. Change comes, Elio, whether we want it to or not. Else I’d be out of a job. Change, thy name is history.” 

Then the accident happened and things changed again. 

Just like that the whole of Boston was gone. Dad was from Boston. His university was gone; the bustling city life that he’d left behind to move with my mother to a Vermont sheep farm was gone. Boom and poof. Done and dusted. 

Except, not really. 

Emergency people appeared, making rounds. They handed us gauzy white masks to be worn at all times outdoors, said it would keep us safe. They handed us a radiation detector too and showed Dad how to use it. After they’d gone, Dad showed me how. 

Dad was not a farmer. But the farm had loyal help for years, and Anchise and Mafalda still showed up to work every day; both of them had worked for my grandparents. They tested the grazing grass, kept a careful eye on radiation levels near the barn where the hay was kept. The sheep would need it for winter when the grass was frozen. 

One day about a week and a bit after the accident, I found Dad up and at it. It was early, before seven o' clock and the sky was still waking up outside. The kitchen smelled warm and sweet like molasses. He had on his coat and a mask. 

“I’ve made you milk with molasses,” he said. “Treat, for the first day back at school. Hurry up.” 

There was a lone mug on the table. I put my nose to it and gathered in the syrupy sweetness. 

“I can’t believe you’re thinking about school,” I said. I’d missed about a week and a half of school, but so had everyone else. But I drank my milk with molasses. Some of it stuck on my teeth. 

“History as the first line of defense,” said Dad. The way he talked about it, sometimes, you’d think that history was a living thing. Maybe that was why he could stomach Mom’s being gone in the way that I never could. If history was a live, living thing, then so was Mom. She used to make me milk with molasses. “Look back not in anger, nor forward in fear, but around you in awareness.” 

“Who said that?” 

“A teacher of mine.” Dad shrugged. “I was trying it out. Might steal it for today as my showstopper. What do you think, Elio?” 

I said, “I’m going to brush my teeth.” 

At school, everyone tended to think that I was weird. Or a teacher’s pet. Or that kid with the dead mother. That second thing used to bother me, but it didn’t so much anymore. 

Marzia slid into the desk next to mine. We didn't have assigned seats, but she always sat there. 

“Hey.” She poked my shoulder.

“Hi.” 

I’m not sure why Marzia still spoke to me. We grew up together, sure, but she got prettier and I got weirder. Still, she made time for me. I should appreciate that more, really. I should do a lot of things more, really, but it’s something I was still working on. I’m not like Dad. 

“Your dad gave a great speech in class today,” Marzia said. We only shared math as a class. She was a year ahead of me, but she really disliked math. Normally, the other kids in eighth grade wouldn’t have hesitated to let a ninth grader who was falling behind in math have it. But no one bothered Marzia. She was untouchable. Almost too good for our tiny town. “Something about looking around.” 

“That’s not how it goes.” I looked at her. 

“I know, genius,” Marzia settled her hand in my curls, but just for a second. “Just checking if you’d been paying attention. You always seem like you’re someplace else.” 

In a way, she was right. I was stuck here. I was stuck here with no place to go. I wanted to be anywhere else. 

In the end, I never saw Boston except in pictures and on television, once. They’d done some sort of documentary on Dad’s university and we’d watched it together as a family, Mom, Dad, and me. After it was over and the credits rolled, Dad opined that it was a perfectly good documentary, but he was disappointed that the film crew hadn’t bothered to show the world outside campus. The regular student haunts, like Dad’s favorite pizzeria, his preferred cafe, where they’d served him proper espresso. My parents had, admittedly, very little in common, except _joie de vivre_ and a love for a well-brewed cup of joe. 

Not that it did them a lot of good. Dad’s stuck like I am, because he’d never sell the farm. It wasn’t something we talked about. I’d never worked up the courage to ask him about it. Anyway, all that was moot, it wasn't as if anyone would want to buy the farm now. 

I did wonder if Dad ever missed Boston. His Ph.D diploma hung over our mantelpiece. I once caught Mafalda dusting it. She swore me to absolute secrecy. 

“Elio,” Dad caught me halfway up the stairs to my room. I slept in the attic, where a skylight allowed me to stare up at the night’s sky. There used to be stars. Now there weren’t any. 

Dad had a study, but he preferred to grade papers in the dining room in case I needed him. 

“Yes?” 

“Come here, I’d like to speak to you.” 

I hopped down the stairs. I didn’t think I was in trouble, but Dad rarely used this tone of voice with me unless it was serious. He’d used this precise tone of voice when he’d come back with Mom from the hospital that one time. 

“Sit down.”

I sat. 

“Do you remember the evacuees I told you about?” 

I did. Someone had come around to our house claiming to represent the government; our farm was in a highly coveted area, just outside of the fallout zone. Affected by radiation but manageable. There were others, others who weren’t so lucky. The hospitals were full; the authorities were desperate for volunteers. 

“I thought you said we didn’t have to.” 

Dad put down his pen and looked at me for a long moment. “I did say that. But I changed my mind.” 

Fear welled up in my throat. “Where would they stay?” 

“It’s a boy and his mother. I thought we’d put them in the back bedroom.” 

“Mom’s room.” 

“It is not your mother’s room, Elio.” 

Of course he’d think that. Sometimes, I forgot how my father felt, but all of that, was also bound up in an impossible feeling of unfairness. That I was born into a world that hardly knew what it was like to be someone like me. 

“Have you met them?” 

“I’ve met them,” my father affirmed. “At the hospital. The mother is a woman called Mrs. Miriam Trent. Her son’s called Oliver.” 

“Which one of them is sick?” 

“Oliver is,” Dad said. “But the hospital wouldn’t have released him if he was a danger to others. They’ll send a nurse around for all the heavy lifting.” 

“I don’t want a sick person in this house,” I said. “I’ve had enough of sick people.” 

“Elio.” 

I stilled. Dad looked so disappointed in me. I cast my eyes down and I didn't look at him. “Please?” 

“Sometimes, we do things we don’t want to but we have to. The Trents will be here tomorrow.” 

I stood outside watching Mafalda change the sheets in the back bedroom. The sheets were freshly laundered and the furthest thing away from death. 

“And what do you think?” I said. 

Mafalda had children of her own, but they were grown, away. Far away from here. 

“I think Mr. - Samuel is doing a very kind thing.” Mafalda had trouble calling Dad by his given name. She always had to think about it. 

“What about me?” I said. I didn’t really think of Mafalda as my mother, but in a lot of ways, she was the closest thing that I had. 

She just looked at me. “You’ll learn. And you’ll grow up. Everything takes time.” 

The first time I saw Oliver Trent, half of his face was obscured by a white gauzy mask and he looked like death itself. A woman wheeled him inside in a chair. I assumed it must be his mother, with shawl almost engulfing her thin, skeletal frame. It was the start of autumn, but it wasn’t cold, not yet.

I sat at Mom’s piano. It was like the only thing that existed of her. Mom loved Chopin, and I learned to love him too, if belatedly. I’d been halfway through his Nocturne Op. 9 no. 1. I couldn’t play it like her, but I was trying to. 

“Oliver likes Chopin,” said the woman, Mrs. Trent. “You must be Elio.” 

“I am.” 

She spoke very softly, as if she was afraid of something. I didn’t have to look very far to guess of what. Oliver’s eyes were closed. It was hard to tell if he was even breathing. 

“Thank you for letting us stay in your home.” 

I shrugged. 

Dad said, “The back bedroom’s through this way, Miriam.” 

I said, “Should I stop playing?” 

Mrs. Trent shook her head. “Please continue, I think it will help him.” 

I turned back to the keys so I didn’t have to see them settle into the dying room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chopin's Nocturne No. 9 Op. 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtIW2r1EalM) for your listening pleasure by the indomitable Arthur Rubinstein. 
> 
> "Look back not in anger nor forward in fear, but around you in awareness." is a quote from the beginning of _Phoenix Rising_. Hesse attributes it to Ross Hersey, but I wasn't able to find a citation.
> 
> Edit 29/9/19: Many thanks to Elemental_Pea, who pointed out that the above quote was from the American cartoonist James Thurber. Not sure why Hesse quoted who she did!


	2. Chapter 2

“You have evacuees staying with you at your house?” Marzia’s eyebrows rose up. We were at hers doing homework. She wore her mask even indoors. It wasn’t because she wanted to; her parents were just on this side of paranoid, and she was tired of arguing with them. Getting inside of Marzia’s house was always a bit of a journey. First, her father would run the detector everywhere all over my body, even the ridiculous parts of me like under my armpits, before I was allowed in. 

He made me wear my mask indoors too, but behind the closed door of Marzia’s bedroom, I mostly wore the mask around my chin, it made seem like I had sort of a fuzzy beard. 

“You’ll never be able to grow a beard,” Marzia pressed her thumb against my chin. 

“Dad has a beard,” I said. “At least I have more of a chance than a snowball does in hell.” Dad did have a beard; it was peppered with gray, and he kept it neatly trimmed. Sometimes, I found remnants of his beard in the sink, but it wasn’t very often that I did. Only when Dad was in a hurry to get somewhere. 

“Whatever,” Marzia said. I could tell she had already lost interest. We were supposed to be studying basic algebraic equations, and Marzia’s attempts at studying mostly consisted of her drawing curly cursive x’s on a piece of wide-lined notebook paper. She took my hand, and drew one across my palm. I rubbed at the ink. 

“This won’t come off.” I said. 

“Sure it will, you just have to use some soap.” Marzia peered at me. “So how many people are in your house?” 

“Mrs. Trent and her son Oliver,” I said. “Mrs. Trent cooks sometimes. I can’t figure out if it offends Mafalda or not.” 

“Do you like her cooking, Mrs. Trent’s?” 

I thought Marzia must be joking. We were definitely old enough by now to remember a time when canned foods were a rarity around these parts. Perishables were the point of pride. Just last fall, Anchise had taken a shotgun in search of deer. Dad hadn’t really approved, but deer season meant grazable land was sometimes overrun and Mafalda liked cooking venison. She did a great job of it too.

This year and probably for many years to follow, there would be no venison. There was no telling what deer ate. And of course, it was better to be safe than sorry. 

I frowned, “The other day she tried to make us, me and Dad, some dessert. She put canned peaches into a pot and boiled it with some cream and cinnamon sprinkled in. Some kind of custard or something. Said it was Oliver’s favorite but he didn’t even eat any. I don’t think it counts. I don’t want them in my house.” 

“If they weren’t at your house, where else would they go?” 

“That hasn’t anything to do with me!” The words rushed out of my mouth, and I was suddenly sorry to have said anything. 

So I shrank and it was easy for Marzia to stare me down. Then she said, “Let’s get back to math. Don’t you ever think algebra is sad and lonely?” 

“What do you mean?” I said. I tried to think that she didn’t mean anything by it, and Marzia rarely did. It was another matter whether my head was convinced. 

“I mean.” Marzia tapped the edge of her worksheet with her pencil. “It always says doesn’t it, solve for _x_. _X_ is the persnickety thing, the thing we have to make disappear. If we did, everything would be normal. Nobody wants him around, that darn _x_. The world would be better if he just went away!”

Now it’s my turn to stare at her, but I’m mostly just confused. “What are you even _talking_ about?” 

Marzia’s mask puffed as she talked. I could only see her eyes, but I could just as easily imagine her mouth, pulled straight and displeased. “I’m only saying, Elio, that if you solve for _x_, he -- it, it wouldn’t be a problem, would it?” 

I walked home from Marzia’s with my coat pulled tight around me. Usually, I enjoyed the cold and the wind, and the winding path that took me from one farm to another. But everything was different now. The windy cold reminded me not of how snow would come soon, but what was in the air. 

When I got home, I welcomed the warm rush of heat that got through, even with my mask still on. But I knew I couldn’t hurry. First, I had to shed my coat, shoes, and mask and put them away. 

“Hello, Elio,” said Dad. He was sitting at the dining room table with Mrs. Trent. They seemed to have been talking in hushed voices, because I hadn’t heard anything. 

“Hi,” I said to them. 

“Do you get much homework done at Marzia’s?” 

“Most,” I said. “Kind of.” Dad kept looking at me until I looked away. “...I’ll do the rest after dinner.” 

“Never mind that,” Dad said, and this surprised me since he was usually strict about me finishing up homework as quickly as possible. Dad was ever the collector of good habits, and punctuality was chief among them. “Mrs. Trent was wondering if you could spend some time with Oliver before dinner.” 

Mrs. Trent looked at me and clasped her bony hands together. She looked out of place in our house, and I was suddenly filled with fear of her being a stranger, of what she’d brought into this place, her and her son. “Oliver told me he loved your Chopin, Elio.” 

“Did he really?” I said. It’d been a little less than a week since the Trents had settled in. I often saw Mrs. Trent flitting around the house helping Mafalda with indoor chores, but since he’d been wheeled into the back bedroom by his mother, I hadn’t seen Oliver at all. 

When I went downstairs to use the bathroom during the mornings, which adjoined the back bedroom, I sometimes took my time, straining my ear against the door to hear any semblance of sound. But I heard nothing, and Oliver never once came knocking either, to demand that I relinquish the bathroom. 

“Elio,” Dad said, and there was a warning simmering underneath. 

I bit my lip nervously. Somehow, I felt ashamed, to tell my father I was afraid. I was afraid of stepping into that room, breathing in death. 

“What do I do with him?” I said instead. “He’s probably not up for talking, right? He’s sick.” 

Mrs. Trent said, “My Oliver likes reading. Samuel says you own lots of books.” 

“My mother did,” I nodded. When Dad started cleaning out the back bedroom, I squirreled all of Mom’s books upstairs. He hadn’t stopped me, and I knew, that he went up to my room sometimes, to look at my books, and to thumb through them sitting on my bed. 

Dad touched my shoulder. “Why don’t you go upstairs and pick something nice to read to Oliver?” 

My mother used to read to me too. Not always in English. She sometimes read German, French, even Italian, valuing words for not only what they expressed and their meaning, but also for their musicality. I once had all of those tongues inside of me, surrounding me in the air like a warm cocoon, but now she was gone. English now lived alone in my head, one and lonely. A pastiche of a life I could have had. 

I went up to my room and passed a hand over my bookshelf, which was a sturdy oak affair opposite my bed. I knew nothing of Oliver, save that he liked Chopin, and that he liked to read. If Mrs. Trent and I had been by ourselves, I would have said to her that everyone liked to read, and that the sentiment meant very little.

I passed over Shakespeare, thinking that Oliver would be bored with the Bard since he was probably doing that in school. I passed over the some of the other books that had been mine, but I’d grown out of them and therefore, they were possibly going to be of no interest to a sixteen-year-old boy. 

An author who Mom liked a lot was an Austrian named Stefan Zweig. Zweig wrote primarily about Viennese, and by extension, Austrian high society during the first decades of the twentieth-century. Even though Zweig was worlds away from my mother and me, she felt a great kinship to him, and I clung to that kinship. After thinking a moment, I took _Burning Secret_ and also the novella in its original German and went back downstairs. 

I knocked on the door to the back bedroom, summoning courage. I thought about what waited for me on the other side and I wanted to flee. 

“Come in,” said a voice very thinly from inside the room. I thought about Oliver in the wheelchair again and his voice sounded not like it was his. 

I opened the door a sliver and expected the place to smell thickly of sickness, but all I could smell was fresh wood. I closed the door very slowly behind me as an excuse to not look towards the bed. Not yet. After the door clicked shut, I knew I’d run out of excuses. 

Oliver Trent lay on my mother’s deathbed and he was so tall his feet hung off the edge. He looked awake, but barely, and breathing seemed to hurt him. 

“I can come back,” I said. 

Oliver shook his head. 

My feet felt like they had lead weights attached to them, but I forced myself to sit in the chair beside his bed. I had the sinking feeling that the chair had been set there especially for me. 

“Hello.” I set both volumes across my knees and I felt silly all over again. “Your mother said you liked to read. I have a lot of weird books. Mostly they belonged to my mom.” 

From this vantage point, I looked at Oliver for the first time. He seemed to be struggling to keep his eyes open, but I could tell his eyes were blue. The pale sickly shade that was his skin made his eyes seem all the brighter. I forced myself to stay in that chair. 

Oliver turned towards me in the bed and opened his mouth. He looked like he had lots to say, but what came out was just, “Hi.” 

I hurt. It wasn’t the sort of hurt that came with a skinned knee or a sprained finger. It was the sort of dark little hurt that grew bigger the more you thought about it. I was determined not to, and shook the hurt the best I could out of my head. 

I swallowed and said, “Do you like funny books?” 

Oliver nodded. 

“I thought this one’s funny. I still read it once in a while.” 

“...Two?” Oliver managed, and I saw him pointing at the other book. 

“This one is in German,” I said. “I can’t read it. But look what’s inside.” I opened it up and displayed the front page towards him, careful not to crack the spine. It was not an old edition, but I was mindful of what it’d already gone through. “There’s flowers inside, Edelweiss. Which means it was probably a gift to someone. Would you like to hold it?” 

“Okay.” 

Oliver laid his hands on the covers, palm up. I placed the book in his hand, and for a moment, I thought he was going to seize up. But he didn’t. 

“Can I read to you from this?” He nodded again and closed his eyes. I watched as his thumbs traced the worn pages and then I began to read out loud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the treatise on Zweig I just adore him. For anyone who is interested in _Burning Secret_, [here](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/sep/06/fiction.roundupreviews2) is a pretty good, mostly spoiler free review.


End file.
